The Woman Thou Gavest With Me

By Henry James

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Etext by Ian Hillman

“The Woman Thou Gavest With Me”

 

 

THE QUESTION which is seeking to itself resolved by the “women's-rights” agitation is, whether woman is or is not the mere female of man. We know very well that there is a female man in rerum natura; and the Good Book, moreover, has long taught us that man was “created” male and female; but the doubt which is gathering in many minds is, whether woman, properly speaking, is that man. The question is suggesting itself to thoughtful persons, whether woman does not express an absolute or final phase of human nature rather than a contingent and complementary one; whether she is not something very much more than man either male or female,—-something, in fact, divinely different from either. It is absurd to suppose, if woman were merely the female man she is commonly reputed to be, that her rôle in history could have been so unlike that of the male man, or that she could have so impressed herself on the imagination of the race as to make submission not rule, persuasion not authority, attraction not command, the distinctive mark of her genius. It is contrary to the analogy of nature that the female of any species should display so signal a contrast to the male as to amount to a generic diversity. And yet this is the difference woman exhibits to man. To be sure, there have been some conspicuous instances of the female man in history, such as Boadicea, Queen Elizabeth, Catherine of Russia, and doubtless some of those Indian princesses whose examples Mr. Mill has recently invoked. But no one can deny that these are very exceptional cases, and that woman on the whole has displayed a cast of character and a method of action so generically distinct from that of man as utterly to confute the notion of her being merely his female.

It is a curious feature of the symbolic Genesis,—-viewed in this connection,—-that, while plants and animals are said to be created each after its kind, i.e. to possess mere natural or generic identity, man alone is said to have been created in God's image, male and female, i.e. to possess not merely generic identity, but specific individuality. Indeed, if this were not so, we should have had no history different from that of the ant and the beaver: for history is the only field of human individuality. It is another curious trait of this mystic record that man, or Adam, thus created male and female, emerges upon the scene fully formed before Eve, or woman, is apparently so much as thought of. And then, when she does appear, we find her signalised not by any means as the female of man, sustaining a merely natural or outward relation to him, like that of the female of every other species to the male, but as his wife, sustaining an inward or spiritual relation to him: his wife, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, or so intimately near and dear to him, that he shall contentedly leave father and mother, i. e. renounce his own nature, in order to cleave to her And again,—-what seems altogether irreconcilable with the customary hypothesis of her generic subserviency to Adam,—-we find her influence over the man growing at such a pace that she not only lifts him above his own nature, but persuades him to forfeit Paradise itself rather than continue to dread the death involved in obedience to the moral instinct. “The woman thou gavest with me,” quoth the old Adam, “she gave me of the tree, and I did eat”; and the poor naked, shivering creature disappears at once from history, leaving to the woman and her seed its exclusive future responsibility. For finally, although the woman in common with man suffers the consequences of his fall, she is seen henceforth to supersede him in the divine regard, her seed and not his being the pivot upon which the redemption of the race from the hardships imposed upon it by his credulity or unbelief is appointed to turn.

Now certainly I make no appeal to these sacred symbols with a view to extracting any literal or scientific information from them; for their distinctive sacredness lies in their singular ineptitude to prompt or dominate thought, while they are just as singularly adapted to illustrate and promote it; and it is for this purely correspondential aid and service that I now resort to them. I avail myself of their picturesque garb only to clothe and set off my own private conception of woman, or give it outline and colour to the readers apprehension; for I myself; like everybody else, suffer grievously from the excessive drought that pervades the ordinary literature of the topic, in which the spiritual or distinctively human conception of sex gasps and expires under the mere sensuous or organic conception. I am deeply interested in the practical success of the woman's enterprise, but it is not because I care an iota for woman as the female man merely, i. e. as expressing a simply organic or animal subserviency to the male man; for I have long been used to believe in woman not as sexually, but only as spiritually, pronounced. No, it is exclusively because I regard her as a hitherto slumbering, but now fully aroused and original divine force in our nature, both male and female, or above sex, without whose acknowledgment the wheels of the world's destiny henceforth obstinately refuse to go forward. Women maybe what they please; they have no power to compromise woman any more than man has, however appropriately their natural modesty, grace, and refinement reflect her essential infinitude. For woman means not human nature, but human culture. She means human nature no longer outwardly finited by its own necessities, or its own animal, vegetable, and mineral instincts, but inwardly freed from this bondage, or infinited, by God's own indwelling. In short, woman in my opinion symbolizes humanity no longer in its merely created or physical and moral aspect, in which it feels itself under law to God, or to a nature infinitely incommensurate with itself; but in its regenerate, or social and aesthetic, aspect, in which it feels itself divorced from any legal vassalage even to God, and becomes, on the contrary, freely and frankly at one with him.

Practically, then, the woman's movement claims infinitely grander associations than those lent to it by its more conspicuous advocates in either gender; and I, for my part, see no reasonable prospect even of their lesser aspirations in its behalf being realized, until it is duly honoured in this superior light. It is not at bottom a movement in behalf of either sex chiefly, but of both sexes quite equally; though, if there be any difference, I should say that man would turn out its chief beneficiary. For if woman is dependent upon him for her outward subsistence and honour, he is dependent upon her influence for all those inward or spiritual qualities which lift him above the brute, and should be even more interested than she herself is, therefore, to have her character and action freed from all gratuitous obstruction. Thus the agitation is not in the least a partial one. It is an agitation, if there ever was one, in behalf of humanity itself. The specific watchword under which the battle is fought, and the victory will yet be won, is doubtless woman ; but woman in her representative character only, standing for all that is divine in our common nature, or for the dignity of the human race itself and the chances of its immortal future, which alone are the vital interests at stake. Pity it is, accordingly, to find the cause conducted with so much partisan acrimony as it habitually is on both sides. What with the Todd's and Fulton's here, and the Train's and Anthony's there, the good cause will, erelong, cease to recognize itself. Even Mr. Mill, whose name is a guaranty of honesty in any cause, loses his judicial rectitude in this, and betrays the wilful zeal of a sharp attorney. Nevertheless, his book is on every account the one best worth reading that the controversy has called forth. His fundamental principle, unfortunately, is the insignificance of sex, and the cordial way in which he flagellates that venerable superstition is little short of astounding. The distinction between man and woman, in Mr. Mill's estimation, if I do not misconceive him, is purely organic. There is really nothing corresponding to it in either the rational or moral plane. Sex is an attribute of matter, not of mind, or holds true only in universals, not in particulars.

But Mr. Mill's heart is after all a great deal wiser than his head. No animal, even if he were for the nonce the highly moral and rational animal Mr. Mill is, could ever have felt the noble lyrical rage which has repeatedly burst forth in Mr. Mill's inspired and impressive, though exaggerated, tributes to the memory of his wife. That fine passion lifted Mr. Mill quite above the earth, and made him acutely feel the whilst, if not reflectively understand, the literally infinite distance that separates marriage from concubinage, or woman from man. What among the animals answers to the marriage sentiment in the human bosom, is not the passion of the male for the female, were it even that of the dove for its mate, but that unconscious or involuntary looking up of the whole animal creation to man, which we see exemplified in the dog's delight in his master. Love, I admit, so long as it remains unchastened by marriage, is the same in man as in the animal. That is to say, it demands the entire subjection of the female, and if it were not the fatally illogical thing it is, would eventually compass her annihilation. Look for example, if you need any, at Mr. Swinburne's epileptic muse. Mr. Swinburne is the modern laureate of love, love inspired by sense, or unreconciled to marriage; and you have only to consult his poems to see how fatal always the lover turns out to his paramour, how he yearns literally to consume her, or to flesh his teeth in her, just as if he were mere unmitigated tiger, and she mere predestinated kid. But marriage is the apotheosis of woman, and I envy no man's spiritual possibilities who is not liable on occasion to Mr. Mill's practical hallucination in that regard, when he identified all divine and human worth with the person of his wife. Mr. Mill is not near so explicit as he might be on this subject, but his implicit deliverance leaves no doubt that he speculatively regards marriage as a mere voluntary tie between men and women, essentially devoid of social obligation, or having at most only a politico-economical interest to society. What I mean to say is, he regards marriage as devoid of any distinctively spiritual sanction, any sanction above the personal welfare of the parties to it, or reflecting any interests more vital and sacred than those of their reciprocal delight in each other.

But in every marriage contract there are three inevitable parties; a particular man and woman, professing mutual affection for each other, on one hand, and the society of which they are members, on the other. Now the marriage institution does not originate in the necessities primarily of this or any other man and woman, but in the necessities of society itself. It is a strictly social institution, growing out of the exigencies, not of human nature, but of human culture; and it contemplates first of all, therefore, the advantage of society itself, and through that alone the advantage of all its individual members. And Mr. Mill is above all things a moralist, not a philosopher. That is to say, he cherishes so supreme a zeal for the interests of freedom in man, as to feel a comparatively inert sympathy for society, or the interests of order. And consequently, when he describes marriage he pictures it as a mere covenant of extreme friendship entered into by a man and a woman, involving no external obligation, and limited only by their own good pleasure. Mr. Mill, of course, means very well. He means at bottom simply to utter a manful protest against the assumption of any fatal contrariety between the public and private life of the world, between the interests of force or necessity and those of freedom. But, like all moralistic or rationalistic reasoners, he fails to give due speculative weight to the idea of our associated destiny, and hence, whenever the interests of universality and those of individuality conflict, he makes no effort to reconcile them, but avouches himself the blind devoted partisan of the latter interest.

A man's life is one thing, and his opinions a very different one; so that, however much Mr. Mills notion of marriage violates our ordinary canons as to the essential discrepancy between chaste and libidinous manners, Mr. Mill himself is too right-minded a man to share the practical illusions upon that subject which have long been creeping over the private mind of the race both in Europe and in this country. It is astonishing to observe the small drizzle of indecency that is settling down upon the minds of imbecile, conceited people here and there and everywhere, and passing itself off as so much heavenly dew. It seems to be an accepted notion, even among many sober-minded people, that any union of the sexes is chaste if the parties to it are only fanatically indifferent to the ordinary obligations of sexual morality. But a chaste union of the sexes always contemplates marriage either actually or prospectively, and so prevents the mere outward intercourse of the parties to it becoming a conspicuous fact of consciousness on either side. The only thing that degrades the relation of the sexes, or keeps it inhuman and diabolic, is, that its sensuous delights are prized above its inward satisfactions or the furtherance it yields to men's spiritual culture. And what marriage does for men, accordingly, the great service it renders our distinctively moral or human instincts, is, that it dulls the edge of these rapacious delights, of these insane cupidities, by making them no more a flattering concession of privilege, but a mere claim of right or matter of course. In short, the sole dignity of marriage, practically viewed, lies in its abasing the male sway in our nature, and exalting the feminine influence to its place. Thus, when a man loves a woman with chaste love, it is with a distinct self- renunciation, because he perceives in her a self infinitely more near and dear to his heart than his own self, or because she presents to his imagination such an ineffable grace of modesty or self-oblivion as makes him feel that to possess her, to associate her with the evolution of his proper heart and mind, would be to sum up all the blessedness God himself can confer upon him. I wonder that no husband or lover has ever discovered in the mystical genesis of Eve, and the record of her subsequent relations to the mystical Adam, first and second, that she could have been intended to symbolize nothing else than the principle of selfhood or freedom in human nature; and that marriage consequently prophesies that eventual reconciliation of spirit and flesh, individuality and universality, of the divine and human natures, in short, which is to take place only in a perfect society or fellowship of man with man in all the earth.

Dr. Bushnell also contributes an element to the current dispute, but his book is neither so earnest nor yet so sincere as Mr. Mill's; its chief interest arising from its reflecting so boldly the liberalized sentiment which in many quarters is invading the Church, in regard to questions of public morality. His essay lacks consequently that deep, rich flavour of personal conviction which abounds in Mr. Mill's discourse, where truth, or what the author deems such, is everything, and rhetoric goes for naught; but it has its value, nevertheless, as showing with what strides the conservative mind among us is adjusting itself to the new horizons of thought, when even rhetoric finds its account in repeating them. For Dr. Bushnell would open all spheres of action to women, except the administrative one; so that I suppose it is only a question of time, when he and those he represents will yield this intrenchment also.

Nor yet does Yale College wish to go all unheard in the present melée of speculative thought, her learned president's essay being an animated protest against the prevalent relaxation of the marriage bond operated by our State legislation. It is an historical compend of old-time laws and usages relating to marriage, and a vigorous though hopeless plea for a return to the Christian law of divorce. I say “hopeless,” because it is evident that President Woolsey does not himself expect any retrograde legislation on this subject to succeed. I am persuaded, for my on part, that the only hope of good men like President Woolsey, who cherish purity and order in the sexual relation; and are, therefore, utterly bewildered by any present outlook in that direction, is in looking forwards, not backwards. These great ends are to be promoted, not by any legislation whatever, but only by the increased energy and diffusion of the social sentiment The inappreciable value of ritual marriage consists in its having furnished the sole guaranty of the family unity, which is the indispensable germ in its turn of that eventual unity of the race, which we call by the name of “society.” If then, as all our divorce legislation prove; the marriage tie is losing the literal sanctity which once hallowed it, it can only be because the isolated family sentiment is providentially dying out, or giving place to a sentiment more spiritual, which is that of the associated family; in which case we are entitled and even bound to hope that whatever ritual sanctity may be lost to marriage will be made up to it in real sanctity. No divine institution can ever be enfeebled front without, but only from within, that is, by surviving its uses; so that it; as all signs show, the family bond is really dissolving, we may be sure that it is doing so only through the access of a larger family spirit in men; that is, by the gathering instinct of a family unity among us large enough at last to house all mankind. And when this unity becomes avouched in appropriate institutions; we need have no fear that the relations of the sexes, now so degraded, will not become elevated out of the dust of men's contempt. For then, for the first time in history, the interests of chaste marriage, which alone give law to those relations, will command no longer the voluntary or calculated, but the spontaneous and irresistible homage of the human heart.

A person interested in these matters may also read, not without profit, The “Woman who Dared. “ It is an unrhymed, and yet by no means wholly unrhythmical, plea for the freedom of individual men and women to take the marriage law into their own hands, and tighten or relax it at their own pleasure: a plea with which the author's sympathetic heart has evidently had more to do than his reflective judgment. I do not mean to say that there is any evidence of inspiration in the poem. On the contrary, it is a regular social-science report, relieved by bits of descriptive rhetoric; and no muse that haunts hallowed places was ever invoked for her consent to a syllable of it. At the same time, it leaves you with a cordial friendliness to the author; your wonder being that a writer, so terribly intentional as he is should turn out on the whole so amiable and innocuous. Mr. Sargent, too, in his turn, seems intellectually indifferent to the grandly social aspects of the sexual problem, and sensitive only to its lower, personal bearings. These are much, no doubt; but they are incomparably below the others in intellectual importance. Indeed, Mr. Sargent's speculative views on this subject are so extreme, he leaves the interests of society as a factor in human affairs so wholly out of sight, that I utterly fail to see how he would discriminate between marriage and concubinage.. Marriage is essentially a race-interest in humanity, while concubinage is essentially a personal one. This difference is what forever spiritualises marriage to men's regard, and what forever canalises concubinage. In other words, what alone sanctifies the sexual instinct among men, and lifts it above mere brute concupiscence, is that it is not rightfully bound to the sensuous caprice of the subject, but obeys the interests of society; that the welfare of society is primary in it, and the welfare of persons altogether secondary. Such is the sole meaning of marriage. It is a social institution, a race-interest exclusively, not a personal one, and no one has the least title to its honours and emoluments, spiritually regarded, who is not habitually ready to postpone himself to his neighbour. A fortiori then, Mr. Sargent's poetical men and women have no right, underived from their own ignorance or wilfulness, to take the marriage law into their own keeping and abrogate it at their own convenience, without the amplest previous social authorization.

This consideration ought to be decisive also, in my opinion, as to the pretension which Dr. Bushnell and Mr. Sargent both alike lend to women,—-that of voluntarily initiating the conjugal compact. For I cannot help regarding the marriage of a man and woman as a crude earthly type or symbol of a profounder marriage which, in invisible depths of being, is taking place between the public and private life of man, or the sphere of his natural instinct and that of his spiritual culture: man, in the symbolic transaction, standing for the former or coercive element, that of physical force or passion; while woman represents the latter or yielding element, that of personal freedom or attraction. And if this be so, then dearly the initiative in all things relating to love and marriage belongs of right to man alone; and no woman can practically dispute his prerogative without so flagrant a dereliction of her proper nature, or her instinctive modesty, as to provoke the long disgust of every man in whose favour she should thus unsex herself.

On the whole, and to conclude:—-There is vastly more in the woman's movement, so called, than meets the eye of sense, which yet is the eye of the mind with all those who obstinately regard woman as the mere sexual counterpart and diminutive of man. A whole library, full of reconciling significance to the controversy, still remains unpublished and eke unwritten, without which nevertheless the controversy will not have reached its due intellectual dimensions, nor consequently allow itself to be permanently settled. In fact, I am persuaded that we shall never do ripe justice even to the material aspects of the problem, until we come to look upon man and woman as two contrasted terms of a great creative allegory, in which Man stands for what we call the World, meaning thereby human nature in moral or voluntary revolt from God; and Woman for what we call the Church, meaning thereby human nature in spiritual or spontaneous accord with its divine source: the actual point of unity or fusion between the two being furnished by the final social evolution of humanity.